Analysis of Monogram
Page (Chi Rho)

One of the most sublime examples of medieval
painting ever seen, the Monogram Chi/Rho page is the most important
page in the late 8th-century Book
of Kells, arguably the finest of all illuminated
manuscripts of the Middle Ages and famous for the intricate swirling
patterns of its Celtic
art. The book was created about 800 by Irish monks in the monastery
of Iona, off the western coast of Scotland. The monastery was founded
by Saint Columba in 563, and quickly became a centre of Irish
monastic art and culture. (See also: Cathach
of St. Columba, 610-20; and the Book
of Durrow, 650-80.) Following a particularly savage Viking attack
in 806, the Iona monks, together with their collection of early
Christian art, moved to the Abbey of Kells, County Meath, Ireland.
The Book of Kells remained here until 1007, when it was stolen. Its ornamentation
- a typical example of Celtic
metalwork art - included a gold cover encrusted with precious stones.
But these were torn off when the book was stolen and the rest thrown in
a ditch, from where it was recovered and returned to the Abbey.

The miniature
painting which fills the Monogram page, is almost entirely devoted
to the two Greek letters Chi and Rho (the first two letters
of the Greek word for Christ) which together form Christ's monogram. Dominated
by complex Celtic
designs - featuring Celtic
interlace and Celtic
Spirals, as well as Celtic
Knots, key patterns and zoomorphic images - whose intricacy is astounding,
the page also features several well-hidden figurative images. These include
three angels, as well as two mice eating a communion wafer. Colour
pigments used in the Monogram page and other folios in the Book of
Kells, include yellow and red ochre, indigo, green copper, and the extremely
rare lapis lazuli which was imported from mines in Afghanistan. See also:
Making
of Illuminated Manuscripts (c.700-1200).

Like Chinese
calligraphy - which is at the same time poetry, painting, and many
other things besides - the qualities of Celtic style abstract decoration
go way beyond its decorative function. This is especially the case when
the work in question is the Book of Kells, unanimously hailed as the highpoint
of "Insular" illumination and one of the key works of Medieval
Christian art (c.600-1200). Simultaneously concealing and revealing,
hiding and displaying, the extraordinarily luxuriant ornamentation of
the Monogram page is not simply a masterpiece of medieval
art: it is, at once a work, an object, and a mysterious path, with
its connotations of magic and revelation. Its visible forms are not just
"something written" and then embellished; they show the Word,
the divine Word, which must be hidden in order to remain Truth, as if
in a tabernacle.

In the twelfth century, an erudite churchman
and chronicler, Giraldus Cambrensis, said of the Book of Kells: "Look
at it closely and you penetrate into the greatest secrets of art, you
will find there ornaments of such complexity, such a wealth of interlace
knots and lines that you would think it the work of an angel rather
than that of a human being." (Topographia Hiberniae, 1188).

The Book of Kells contains the four Gospels
of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in Latin, as well as lists of Hebrew
names, and the Eusebian canons. It is written on vellum and its illuminations
are thought to be the result of up to three different artists. Such an
exquisitely decorated Gospel book would have been treated as an object
of veneration, and would have been brought out only on special feast days
and festivals. It remained at the Abbey of Kells until 1541, when it was
taken away for safekeeping (during Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries)
by the Roman Catholic Church. Repatriated to Ireland in 1661, it was donated
to the Trinity College Dublin, where it is now conserved. See also: History
of Illuminated Manuscripts (c.700-1200).